


Memory Mechanics

by Philipa_Moss



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-12
Updated: 2011-07-12
Packaged: 2017-10-21 07:17:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/222385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philipa_Moss/pseuds/Philipa_Moss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“A made-up job in the secret service,” said Connie. “I hope to live up to expectations."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory Mechanics

George Smiley was a darling. Connie hadn’t met him until she was three weeks at the Circus and he returned from a month in Berlin. In the meantime, she had heard about him. “Lovely, chubby,” the typists called him. “Shy.” Connie didn’t find him shy so much as gentlemanly when he stuck his head around her door (her shared office door—she wouldn’t get her own office until much, much later and it wouldn’t come cheap) and said, “Miss Sachs, I presume?

Connie circled her desk and shook his hand firmly. “Connie,” she said, “please.”

“George Smiley,” he said, not moving from the doorway. “Control told me he had plans to find a head of research but I hadn’t expected to return and find you already here.”

“A made-up job in the secret service,” said Connie. “I hope to live up to expectations. I’ve been led to believe they’re quite high.”

“Control assures me he’s found a genius in you,” said George, smiling low in his face and, Connie could have sworn, exhibiting every sign of blushing save reddened cheeks.

“How sweet,” said Bill Haydon from the hall. “You’ve found each other at last.”

“Sod off, Bill,” said Connie. “Don’t you have secretaries to seduce?” And George’s eyes became momentarily wide as saucers before his features rearranged themselves in what Connie would soon come to call his narcoleptic poker face.

Bill laughed and loped in. Connie’s office mate was gone and Bill sat on the edge of her desk, disturbing an impressive ream of paper. “One must rest from time to time,” he said.

“How’s Jim?” said Connie.

“How’s Ann?” said Bill, to George, and George blinked widely before removing his glasses to clean them.

To Connie, Bill said, “Drinks, yes? I’ll meet you?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” said Connie.

Bill leaned away from the desk into a standing position. “Do bring anyone,” he said. “Any friend of yours and all that.”

“Yes,” said Connie, “same to you,” and Bill was gone.

George still stood in the doorway, somewhat stunned, it seemed, although by what Connie could not make out. “Care to join us?” said Connie. “It’s sure to be fun. Bill’s a tosser, but he’s my kind of tosser.”

“I might just,” said George. “Where will you be?”

“Pub opposite,” said Connie. “Who’s Ann?”

*****

It was October before Connie met Ann and, she was given to believe, it was astonishing that such an introduction took place at all.

“Watch out,” Jim muttered into her ear before vanishing into the crowd. Connie didn’t have time to ask why before a hand gripped her elbow and a voice shouted into her ear in the perfect Oxbridge drawl, “I understand that you’re the lucky woman.”

Connie rounded on her assailant, who proved to be an impeccably dressed, slender woman of approximately her own age. “I’m sorry?”

“Ann Smiley,” said the woman, gesturing at herself with her drink. “I asked George, ‘Who is that across the room? She’s not a wife and she can’t be a secretary,’ and he said you were Connie Sachs, the redoubtable head of research.”

“He said that, did he?” said Connie, skeptically.

“Well, no,” Ann admitted. “Only the bit about who you are. Bill coined the rest. Bill Haydon. He’s a sort of cousin.”

“Ah,” said Connie.

“It was Bill who spilled the beans, actually,” Ann continued. “Told me about the party. Told me it was wives and husbands and so on. George hadn’t breathed a word, silly man. As if I would miss a chance to catch a glimpse of the action.”

Connie glanced around her at the crowded pub. Unless one counted Peter Guillam’s attempt to chat up the barmaid, there was rather as much action as there ever was. “I don’t see much, myself, in the course of the week,” Connie offered, in an effort to keep up her end of the conversation.

“Of course not,” said Ann, and Connie thought, here’s someone who’s never heard of a honey trap and wouldn’t know one if she were up to her neck in it.

“Jim Prideaux’s your man for action,” Connie continued, remembering his strategic escape. “I’m sure he would simply love to tell you about it.” She gestured in his direction, to where he was, predictably, leaned against a wall in conversation with someone or other. The odd rugby phrase floated over.

Ann nodded enthusiastically and she was gone. Connie watched, with no small amount of glee, the look on Jim’s face when Ann introduced herself and fielded the dark look he sent her way with a wink.

“Wicked woman,” said Bill at her elbow. Connie reflected that her absence from the field was likely for the best, if she could be taken by surprise twice in one night. “You may as well have sent him a bouquet of turds.”

“What, don’t you like her?”

“Well enough,” said Bill. “We are cousins, after all,” as if that explained everything. He continued, “Jim doesn’t, much.”

“Why?” said Connie.

“Search me,” said Bill, in a casual tone that, to Connie’s ears, was anything but. “Look,” he said, “what’s say you and I leave this wretchedness and have a drink.”

“I have a drink,” said Connie. She held up her glass and grinned.

“That’s not what I meant,” said Bill.

“I know,” said Connie.

Ann flashed by. “Must dash,” she said in passing. “ _A bientôt_!”

*****

“I think that they’re… _you know_ ,” said Annie the Legs. That’s how Connie had tagged her mentally and that is how she would be known. Annie the Legs was different from Annie the Bosom only in that Annie the Legs’ chief feature was the pair of long, Cyd Charisse limbs flowing from beneath her skirt and Annie the Bosom, well, that was clear to everyone.

Connie was faced with a dilemma. For reasons passing understanding—or at least passing _logic_ —Connie had allowed Annie to take lunch with her in her office so that she would not be forced to pay for the expensive restaurant meal the rest of the secretaries had their hearts set on. Connie had justified this as an investment: put up with Annie’s inane chatter long enough while catching up on paperwork, and maybe, just maybe, find out more about what made the place tick. Connie liked knowing the ins and outs of her coworkers. At the Circus, hush-hush was the watchword and she was forced to live on innuendo.

The dilemma: Connie had not been listening to a word Annie had been saying. Now, however, she desperately wanted to know who was what. “For how long?” she asked.

“Since Oxford, I think,” said Annie. “But I thought you might know since you spend so much time with him.”

“Well,” said Connie, stalling, “I don’t exactly spend that much time with anyone in particular.”

“Don’t be coy, Connie,” said Annie, in a buttering-up tone. “After hours dates? All the girls know.”

“Then they must know something I don’t,” said Connie, and finally the penny dropped. Of course, she thought. How could I be so thick? “Bill and I are just friends.”

“Connie,” Annie wheedled.

“I assure you.”

“Well,” said Annie, “at any rate, you still must know something about it. The Iron Fist and the Iron Glove? That sounds like one of yours.”

Ah. “It was, actually,” said Connie, allowing herself to preen a little. “What do you think of it?”

“It’s very good,” said Annie impatiently. “Connie. Please.”

Connie sighed. “Annie, are you asking me if Bill Haydon and Jim Prideaux are lovers? Is that what your mouth is struggling to give birth to?”

Annie gaped, but nodded.

“Why doesn’t anyone just come out and say so?” Connie mused, mostly to herself. “I certainly do.” She shook her head, and turned back to Annie. “I don’t know. Perhaps. Once. I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“A bit, yes, I think?” But now Annie was on the defensive and she didn’t want so say anything more about it.

*****

Connie was slightly drunk and it was January and the Tube had closed and there was not a taxi for miles. “George, please, no,” she could hear herself saying. “I’ll walk. It’s a lovely night.” She instantly gave lie to her words by slipping on a patch of ice and grabbing onto him for support.

For a moment it looked as if they might both go down, but George gripped the corner railing, wrapped a supportive arm around her waist, and said, “I live right around the corner. Coffee, at least. I insist.”

With George, Connie knew, it really would just be coffee. “Lovely man,” she said. “Lead on.”

Inside, George pointed Connie into the sitting room and he went to put on the water. “No Ann tonight?”

“No,” came the reply from the kitchen.

Connie held onto the back of the sofa for balance and looked at the art on the walls. When George returned, she gestured at one. “This is shit, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s real,” said George.

“I don’t care how real it is. It looks like it came off the back end of a stolen van.” She rounded on him. “Don’t tell me you like it.”

Unless she was very much mistaken—and Connie never lost her powers of observation, even at this stage of the game—George was attempting to suppress a smile. “It’s one of Ann’s,” he said. “Gift from an uncle, she said. Something off the estate.”

“‘She said?’ Think she’s telling a big one, do you?”

George flinched with his forehead and Connie muzzily considered that she might have gone too far when George said, “Maybe. Either way, you’re right. It is hideous.”

He disappeared back into the kitchen and, in for a penny, Connie called after him, “Lie much, does she, your wife?”

There was a silence, then a sudden, “No more than I do.”

“You do it for a living, though,” said Connie, sinking onto the sofa. “What does she get out of it?”

George returned to the room bearing two steaming mugs of coffee. He sat opposite Connie in what she presumed was his chair. It was worn, and it sat beside a chair stacked with German books. “Freedom, I suppose,” he considered. “She is allowed a private life every bit as secret as mine. We meet in the middle. This is a safe house of sorts. It is all very civilized.”

“That’s nice,” said Connie.

“Yes, isn’t it,” said George, and all of a sudden they were both laughing. Connie was shaking so much with it that she had to put her coffee aside. Eventually George wiped his eyes and said, “No one else has been this forward with me about it.”

“No one?” said Connie.

“No one.”

“I always assumed you talked it over with Peter,” said Connie. “Your little poodle.”

“No, not Peter,” said George. “Just you.”

“Well,” said Connie, saluting him with her mug. “Thank you.”

George bowed in his seat and said, in a voice surprisingly reminiscent of Bill Haydon, “The pleasure, my dear Miss Sachs, is all mine.”

They began to laugh again.

*****

The girl at the bar was named Marjorie. Jim had come back to the table with it, along with their second round.

Bill took his pint and sipped the foam, considering. “Marjorie, eh?”

“Yes,” said Jim. “With a ‘J,’ she was very eager to inform me.”

“How else would one spell it?” Connie wondered aloud. “Some ungodly permutation doubtless exists…”

“But your research hasn’t turned it up?” finished Jim.

“Exactly.”

“I’m going over there,” said Bill.

“No, no, no,” said Connie.

“Sit down,” said Jim.

“No,” Bill protested. “This is an important point. Marjorie or some other spelling she had in mind. This is for the betterment of mankind. We must know.” He wriggled free of Connie’s hold on his arm and Jim’s arresting stare and made his way over to lean against the bar beside Marjorie.

“Wonderful,” Jim said under his breath.

“Bugger all Marjories, regardless of spelling, eh?” Connie offered sympathetically.

Jim grunted. It might have been a thank-you laugh.

“You were at Oxford together,” said Connie.

“Yes,” said Jim.

“I was at Cambridge,” said Connie, “but I was born in Oxford.”

“It’s lovely,” said Jim, and Connie was caught off guard. She had never heard Jim say anything remotely close to “lovely” before. It was always the bluntest, most functional superlatives with him: good, better, best.

“Yes,” said Connie, “it is, isn’t it.”

Bill returned to the table. “She’d got it into her head that it’s ordinarily spelled with a ‘G,’” he said, and then, to Jim, “not that she wanted to tell me. It was you or no one.”

“That’s rubbish,” said Jim.

“So?” said Bill.

“So what?”

“Are you going for her?”

“No,” said Jim, and took a sip of his beer.

“Why not?” asked Bill. Connie wanted to kick him under the table but she couldn’t be sure of her aim.

“You know perfectly well why not,” said Jim. “We’re not all like you.”

“Like me in what way?” Bill enquired silkily. Connie got the distinct impression they had both forgotten she was there.

“Like you like this.” Jim gestured back and forth between Bill and the bar. “Not all of us are constantly on the pull. Some of us are happy as we are.”

“Right,” said Connie, feeling the need to put a word in. It was off-putting for someone so constantly in control of the terms of the conversation to not even be a participant.

“I’m off home,” said Jim. “Early morning in Brixton tomorrow.”

“What’s up?” asked Bill.

“Check your in-tray,” Jim growled, and broke free from the table.

“Well,” said Connie, jokingly, “that’s made everything perfectly clear.”

“Has it?” Bill snapped. “Good. Perhaps some day you might enlighten me.” Then he rose, threw some money down on the table and hurried out after Jim.

Connie considered leaving as well, but she had been looking forward to this second pint. So she settled back and began to drink it. After a while, Marjorie joined her.

“I’m Marjorie,” she said.

“That’s nice,” said Connie.

*****

Connie had met Control over a game of bridge. Periodically, they still played, partnering against Henries from accounts and his timid sister, one of the typists. Control would pick Connie up at her flat in his wheezing car and drive her to the Henries’, they would play bridge, and he would drive her back, never exceeding twenty-five miles per hour. Connie suspected that Control was born old. It was what made him so good at his job.

One night, Control stopped the car outside Connie’s flat but when she moved to get out he reached over and stilled her with a hand on her shoulder. “I, ah,” he said, and he got no further.

For a horrible moment Connie thought Control might be about to declare his love for her.

He began again. “Connie, you know that I have made the Circus my life.”

“It’s the job,” said Connie cautiously.

“I expect the same of all who sail in her,” said Control.

“Yes,” said Connie.

“Smiley knows. He doesn’t know that he knows, but he knows.”

“Yes,” said Connie again, and she sat beside Control in silence for a full five minutes before he spoke again.

“What do you know about,” and he stopped.

“Quite a lot, I would imagine,” said Connie, keeping her tone light. “What did you have in mind?”

Control waved his hand in front of his face, as if brushing away cobwebs. “Never mind, never mind.”

“I say,” said Connie, suddenly quite irritated. It was late and she wanted to go to bed and Control was being maddeningly vague. “You brought me on because of my intelligence and my discretion. Believe me when I say that anything you tell me ends here.”

But Control would not be prodded and eventually Connie got out of the car and went inside.

*****

They were on a training course at Sarratt. Connie lounged by the pitch and watched Bill and Jim play cricket with the new recruits. Strange, Connie thought, that only that morning they had been running an interrogation module. Jim had been screaming in their faces, Bill inserting the occasional clever question, and Connie taking impassive notes. Now here they all were like a picnic at school, the men in cricket whites and the women gossiping on the bank.

“Bizarre,” said Connie aloud. “What a world we rule.”

“Pardon?” said a blonde young woman sitting near Connie.

“Nothing,” said Connie. “The ramblings of an old woman.”

The girl giggled. “You’re not old, Miss Sachs.”

“Perhaps not,” said Connie, watching the sky. “But I soon will be.”

“So will we all,” said the girl. Then, with a glance at the cricket players, she got up quickly and left.

Connie tilted her head and raised her hand to shield the sun and find Bill and Jim coming her way. “You positively frightened that girl away,” she called, as soon as they were close enough to hear. “She must have gotten more than her fair share on the course this morning.”

“If she can’t hack it then she has no business here,” said Jim shortly, and landed on the grass beside Connie.

“That’s not very charitable, darling,” said Connie.

Jim way back on the grass and closed his eyes. “You said it yourself just this morning.”

“Yes,” said Bill, sitting on Connie’s other side after first patting the grass to make sure it was sufficiently dry. “I’m afraid I heard it as well, through a haze of ineptitude.” He sighed theatrically, and looped an arm around Connie’s shoulder. “Why must each generation persist in becoming stupider than the last?”

“They’re not,” said Jim. “You’ve just been cultivating your own intelligence.”

Bill grinned down at Jim fondly.

“It’s just this,” Jim continued. “If you can’t wake up every single day to the knowledge that someone may be standing behind you with their finger on the trigger, then you may as well toss it in. Intelligence has got nothing to do with it.”

“Some are born to it, you mean,” said Connie.

“Yes,” said Jim.

“Personally,” said Bill, stretching and finally landing on his back in the grass as well, “I like to believe that one has a choice: intelligence or brute force. There is a service within the service made up of calculating brains, plotting ahead.”

“From behind their desks,” muttered Jim.

“If need be,” Bill allowed. “But not always.”

“And are you a member of this inner circle?” said Jim, and Connie could almost sense the weight behind is words.

“I should hope so,” said Bill. He went on, “Connie certainly is.”

“I never claimed to be a field agent,” said Connie lightly.

“Why not,” said Jim, smiling, almost laughing. “I could see you know, gunning down anyone who dared to defy you, answerable to no one, murdering with your mind.”

“Imagine her,” Bill said, declaiming, “in darkest Siberia. Imagine her in the fields of Flanders, in Stockholm, clambering over fjords, navigating the driest desert, taking her rest nestled beside aborigines and Mongolians.”

Connie laughed. “In what region exactly do you have me specializing?”

“All of them,” said Bill. “Would you accept anything less?”

“I wouldn’t say no to a cozy little Moscow assignment,” Connie mused.

Jim snorted. “Yes you would, after days with only yourself to talk to. The comrades lack certain skills.”

“Untrue,” said Bill. “What they lack in small talk they more than make up for in storytelling capacity.”

“Tale-telling, more like,” said Jim. “Forgive me for not being quite as taken with them as you are.”

“Taken with them bollocks,” Bill protested.

“Photo?” said a voice above them, and Connie and the men squinted into the sun to see the same blonde young woman from before brandishing a camera. “I’d left it inside,” she said.

“Are we allowed those, on the premises?” Bill wondered aloud.

“Who cares,” said Connie. “Up we get, boys, and smile.”

After the picture, after the young woman walked off and when they thought Connie wasn’t looking, Bill helped Jim dust off his pants. He rested a hand on Jim’s arm and it lingered well past its expiration date and Jim brushed his own against Bill’s back and Connie thought, for the first time, that she had been granted a glimpse at what buoyed them along.

“Dinner!” someone called across the grass, and Connie looped her arms around both of them and they set off into the setting sun.


End file.
